Comments on: Hear what I’m sayin’

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:10:48 +0000

Jean – Your point is right on target…instructional design takes on many disciplines. The overwhelming challenge in today’s industry is the “Instructional Designer” must have skills in all these areas – disciplines. Unfortunately, very few have skills at the mastery level in more than one or two of those disciplines at the same time. Thanks for the post and I hope to spur more of an interest in this direction.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:05:12 +0000

Eric – Agree totally. Having that elusive symmetrical balance is often hard to achieve. Where the instruction may have good balance, the supporting graphics/images are not and where good design/interface has good balance the instruction is not. I fully believe with the right balance of images, color, and a good sequential theme ANY subject can be taught effectively through elearning.

By: Jean Marrapodi

Jean Marrapodi — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:44:49 +0000

How true. It’s so many of these simple things that we “know” that are industry conventions, but somehow get missed in eLearning. We can look at a design and feel like something’s just not right, but not be able to put our finger on what “it” is. ELearning is the integration of many disciplines and it pays to study many forms of design to make ours communicate better. I hadn’t thought about comics as one to look at before, but there are certainly salient principles here. Thanks for the compass of new direction to consider.
Jean

By: erik

erik — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:09:05 +0000

Great post, Kevin! I think that this folds nicely back into the discussion during the ArticulateLive sessions about story as opposed to pure information. It’s all a matter of finding the right balance between good storytelling techniques and good instructional design. And not letting the SMEs overwhelm our beautiful stories with all of their “important information”. Balance. Always balance.